Knowledge

A baseline and endline survey are important review processes for any innovation initiative. Conducting these surveys will allow you to evaluate the outcomes of your project on your target population. In this short guide, we detail how to collect, analyse and use outcome data to review your innovation progress.

Starting a company is always a risky business. Yet, some ventures operate in environments that are particularly unpredictable. Establishing a scaling strategy or following a clear growth plan can be challenging when key external factors - political, economic, or environmental - are volatile. Moreover, contextual instability leads to a scarcity of financial and human resources, while the pressure to succeed increases. With these challenges in place, how do ventures still manage to scale under uncertainty?

The journey of innovation is marked by its trials: the pivots, the failures, and the inevitable changes that challenge our strategies and assumptions. Yet, it is precisely these experiences that lay the foundation for growth, inspire innovative thinking, and catalyse further advancements. In this Year in Review 2023, we share 24 lessons learned across our activities and innovations that can be useful for any public or private sector innovation team and humanitarian and development organizations.

Discover key learnings from the World Food Programme’s experience implementing SheCan, an innovative finance initiative that supports smallholder farmers and micro-entrepreneurs to promote food security and financial inclusion in emerging markets.

This guidance manual offers unique insights and lessons learned for scaling highly impactful innovations based on our experience implementing WFP's Scale-Up Enablement Programme - one of the first within the United Nations to enable innovation scaling since its launch in 2019.

In this article, we share our top 5 tips and lessons learned on designing a corporate innovation function based on the experience of the WFP Innovation Accelerator.

Pivots, failures and change are an inherent part of the innovation process. Lessons learned from responding to these challenges give ground for growth and innovation. Discover our 18 lessons learned from 2022 focused on enabling factors for innovation scaling, designing data-driven programmes, exploring emerging technologies and new financing models, and more.

Explore our unique lessons learned from 2021 - on designing effective innovation programmes, sourcing impactful innovations from around the world, and leveraging new ways of working to enhance our operations.

Discover our unique lessons learned from 2020 as we adapted our programmes and operations to become a fully virtual innovation accelerator amid the pandemic.

Read inspiring stories of two innovative ventures that have achieved impact at scale after participating in acceleration programmes created by WFP’s SDGx Acceleration unit and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

As an early adopter of blockchain in the humanitarian and development sector, WFP is exploring further opportunities to trailblaze on this front. Here’s some of our recent blockchain projects that can change the game for good.

WFP explores responsible, sustainable, and inclusive uses of AI as part of its Frontier Innovations Programme, which seeks technological innovations that can enhance humanitarian work. Learn how 5 innovations powered by artificial intelligence are adding value to our work.

Learn about SKAI, an AI-powered tool co-developed by WFP and Google Research that automatically analyses satellite images to assess damage from disasters.

Global Programme Manager of PRISM, WFP's climate monitoring system, shares insights about the project's development and why it was important to make the technology open-source.

Five reasons why we believe supporting regional innovation is the way forward to building food systems that cater to everyone.

Published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, this article is a thought piece on WFP's work in ensuring sustainable global food systems and the role of regional innovation hubs.